Country music outlaw Willie Nelson sang “Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” more than 25 years ago. He released a very different sort of cowboy anthem this Valentine's Day.

“Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)” may be the first gay cowboy song by a major recording artist. But it was written long before this year's Oscar-nominated “Brokeback Mountain” made gay cowboys a hot topic.

The song, which made its debut Tuesday on Howard Stern's satellite radio show, was written by Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette in 1981. Sublette said he wrote it during the “Urban Cowboy” craze and always imagined Nelson singing it.

Someone passed a copy of the song to Nelson in the late 1980s and, according to Nelson's record label, Lost Highway, he recorded it last year at his Pedernales studio in Texas.

Nelson has appeared in several Western movies and sings “He Was a Friend of Mine” on the “Brokeback Mountain” soundtrack.

TEEN HAS 500 VALENTINES

If any female juniors at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, Fla., weren't aware of classmate Paul Kim, they know him now.

The 17-year-old junior ordered 500 red roses and had them delivered to nearly all his female classmates on Valentine's Day.

A card attached to the roses said, “To all the lovely ladies of 2007, here's wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day. Affectionately, Paul Kim.”

He used money he had been saving since his birthday in December to pay for the roses, which cost about $900.

“To me, Valentine's is a special day,” Kim said. “I realized that not many girls would get anything and it would be an ordinary day. I figured I'd take the initiative and put a smile on their face.”

Kim's estimate on the class size was slightly off. There are more than 600 girls in Cypress Bay's junior class.

SHE LIKES THE BALD LOOK

Natalie Portman says she fulfilled a long-standing ambition by shaving her head for the sci-fi thriller “V for Vendetta.”

“I was really excited to get to shave my head. It's something I'd wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse,” Portman told reporters at the Berlin International Film Festival. “It was nice to shed that level of vanity for a girl.”

However, “I wasn't used to being looked at so much,” the 24-year-old actress said. “Walking down the street, I can usually blend in, and people really stare at you when you're a girl with a shaved head.”

The film, directed by James McTeigue, screened outside the competition Monday. Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski, “V for Vendetta” is set in a future Britain run by a fascist dictatorship.

Portman's character, Evey, is saved from an attack by a masked anarchist known only as V and becomes a comrade in his struggle against the regime.